The Gift from My Brothers for My Birthday Was My Mother’s Broken Bangle Chapter 03

The Gift from My Brothers for My Birthday Was My Mother’s Broken Bangle Chapter 03

The sound of shattering glass echoed across the executive floor.

I tore through the entire lounge, smashing anything within reach. Once the overload broke through every restraint I had left, there was no controlling the destruction.

Even my breathing shook. Tears streamed down my face, but I did not stop swinging.

My brothers kept their distance, terrified that I would hurt myself with the club.

Eventually, my strength gave out.

The golf club slipped from my hand and clattered to the floor. I sagged against the wall, dragging in one ragged breath after another.

Pippa trembled in Ames’s arms.

“She’s terrifying,” she whispered. “I only took a drink. Is she really going to kill me over that?”

She looked up at Tiernan with wet, pleading eyes.

“I’m scared. My leg hurts.”

Tiernan was a doctor. The sight of blood triggered instinct before judgment.

He crossed the room, tore open the fabric around the cut, and examined it.

“It’s superficial. No veins were hit.”

My stomach turned as I watched him care for her.

“You make me sick.”

I said it quietly, then walked out.

For the next two weeks, I did not speak to any of them.

I poured everything I had into my private jewelry exhibition.

I had spent an entire year preparing for it. Every design board, hand-rendered sketch, and technical drawing had been created through sleepless nights.

When my senses became too much, focusing on a single task was the only thing that could quiet the noise in my head.

I kept every original locked inside my private design studio at Rivington House.

No one but me was allowed inside.

Three days before the exhibition, I opened the studio door.

My breath stopped.

Shredded paper covered the floor.

Every one of my original designs had been cut into pieces and dumped into containers of paint and rendering ink.

Pippa was kneeling in the middle of the room with a cleaning cloth in her hand.

The moment she saw me, she stumbled backward and landed hard on the floor.

“Miss Rivington…”

All the blood in my body seemed to turn to ice.

I rushed forward and plunged my hands into the nearest container, trying to pull out the soaked fragments.

It was useless.

Every drawing was ruined.

“Pippa Wren!”

My scream ripped through the house.

My brothers came running. The instant they saw the wreckage, all three of them froze.

Pippa dropped to her knees and burst into tears.

“I don’t know anything about art. I thought those were scraps.”

“The studio looked messy, so I wanted to clean it for you.”

She shook her head frantically.

“I grew up doing chores like this. I swear I didn’t know they mattered.”

Still crying, she grabbed the leg of Dashiell’s pants.

“Dash, please tell her I’m sorry. I’ll pay her back somehow. I’ll work for the rest of my life if I have to.”

Dashiell looked down at her, then at me.

My hands were coated in paint. My whole body was trembling.

“Romy, she was trying to help.”

His voice softened, as if that could make any of this less obscene.

“You’re talented. You can recreate the designs. We can postpone the exhibition for a few days.”

Ames nodded.

“She didn’t even know what the materials were. Don’t punish her for an honest mistake.”

I looked at the three of them, and something inside me went cold.

These were the brothers who had once treated every discomfort of mine like an emergency. When barking kept me awake as a child, they had paid every owner on the block to rehome their dogs.

Now an entire year of my work had been destroyed, and they were telling me to draw it again.

I slowly rose to my feet.

“You thought they were scraps?”

I walked toward Pippa one step at a time and stopped over her.

“Who the hell are you to decide that anything of mine is worthless?”

My voice shook with rage.

“You think crying and offering some dramatic little sacrifice erases what you did?”

I grabbed an opened container of red studio paint and dumped it over her head.

Pippa screamed.

The paint soaked through her hair and ran down her face, staining her clothes.

“You wanted to clean? Then get on your knees and lick every last drop of paint off it.”

Dashiell shoved me backward.

“Romilly Rivington, enough!”

His face twisted with fury.

“You’re completely out of control. You’re acting like a vicious, irrational bully.”